Spiced wine:
“Hey guy,” shouts the woman in the window, hunched by a faux-ye-olde sign, “how about spiced wine in a boot?” And remarkably — or rather, if you’ve been coming to the Christkindlmarket in Daley Plaza for the past decade, predictably — the man stops. He has to; spiced wine in a boot is arguably the grandest tradition at the Christkindlmarket.
So the man pays $7 for a strong, spiced German wine served in a blue ceramic boot. It’s decorated with a Chicago skyline and deeply cheesy. And yet. The wine, gluhwein, delivers a boozy whiff before you even sip and the top is a foamy pink. It’s also strong, not so much spiced as spiked, aromatic and warm. The boot, when the man gets home, goes straight to a keepsake cabinet. Christkindlmarket,
50 W. Washington St.;
daily through Dec. 24.
